TSA Aggressively Pats Down Mom Undergoing Breast Cancer Treatment
“‘Aggressively attempted to do a body cavity search in public”
It’s been too long since we talked about how TSA is easily one of the worst government agencies in existence, but this story is a great reminder.
A forty-two-year-old mom with breast cancer said she felt ‘violated’ after TSA agents attempted a body cavity search in public at the Los Angeles airport. Her crime? She informed agents she was traveling with a medical cream in her bag, like she had done numerous times before without issue. In order to continue traveling with the cream, she had to suffer a pat down ‘with pressure’, said the agents.
Denise Albert notified TSA of her chemo port in advance. They made her remove her shoes (treatment caused sores on her feet) even though she’s a PreCheck flyer, she removed her wig so they wouldn’t ruin it, and blue-gloved agents insisted on feeling up her port to “clear the area”.
The Alberts captured footage of the incident:
From the Daily Mail:
The security agents then pulled her aside, and said she would have to take off her shoes and undergo a full body pat-down ‘with pressure’ if she wanted to take the medical cream with her, Albert wrote.
The agents flouted the TSA pre-check protocol by asking her to take off her shoes, leaving her bare feet freezing for 20 minutes due to her medical treatment, she claimed.
Albert asked to sit down, since her chemotherapy has left her feet covered in sores, which she did not want touching the ground.
They later offered to conduct the search in the privacy of a room, but Albert said she couldn’t walk there because they wouldn’t return her boots.
The radio host said the agents then told her they would ‘apply pressure from head to toe’, and she decided to take her wig off, saying: ‘I didn’t want them to touch it, move it, or ruin it’.
At a certain point, one agent ‘forceab[ly] and aggressively put her hands down my jeans in the back’, Albert wrote, before adding that they ‘aggressively attempted to do a body cavity search in public’.
Video footage showed one woman touching her chest, despite Albert’s medical port. She had also undergone a lumpectomy to remove a growth from her breast.
She said as a TSA PreCheck passenger, she was not required to remove her shoes and agents were supposed to ask whether there were any tender areas they should avoid.
Later, when they went through her bags, they joked about finding her fake eyelashes, and Albert told her she had lost all her hair as a result of the cancer treatment.
A supervisor finally intervened and gave Albert a ‘regular soft pat down’ inside a private room.
She said she had ‘never been so humiliated or felt more violated in my life’.
After taking her horrifying experience public, Albert received an apology from the TSA and a promise to investigate the incident. TSA also promised to train their employees on proper handling of individuals with medical needs.
Gotta love the pervy blue-gloved agents protecting us from a mom undergoing cancer treatment. Bonus: we pay for this.
Defund this godforsaken agency and defund it now.
Follow Kemberlee on Twitter @kemberleekaye
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Probably nothing more than a Lesbian with some power getting her jollies.
They don’t want you flying.
It’s just as simple as that.
Time for the TSA to be killed off. Metaphorically, of course.
Just because she isn’t a swarthy man aged 18 to 55 doesn’t mean she isn’t a terrorist. Oh wait…
There is another aspect of this that hasn’t been addressed. This woman is going through chemo which drastically depresses your body’s ability to fight off infection. Even eating at buffet restaurants or any food grown in the ground is off limits. Here is this woman being forced, with sores on her feet to walk around on a non clean floor being patted down with gloves that have patted down any number of other travelers who have had God only knows what kind of surface bacteria and fungi. TSA has put this woman at risk for a serious infection.
Think about it. The Air Travel industry seems to have a theory that when something happens, the customer is the first (and usually only) person to be inconvenienced in every way, shape or form.
Think about it, if a plane is late? The customer is late
If the Airline overbooks? the customer is inconvenienced
If the TSA “thinks” there is something wrong? the customer pays for it by being very late or missing their flight.
Incoming flight delayed? Too bad, you’re delayed too.
If the Airport closes and you’re stuck there because of snow? The airline will not provide a hotel and you sleep on the floor.
Make a complaint? The TSA can arrest you.
Don’t like something? Hey, you can always go to another airport, right?
But you have to pay for all of this too.
1) In the first batch of revocations of Executive Orders by President Trump, the Federal Employees Unions have to go.
2) The incoming Secretary of Homeland Security needs to issue appropriate orders for the treatment of passengers being screened, both to see that actual threats are detected [which will probably include adoption of a number of Israeli procedures]. The phrasing should include some formulation of what constitutes due process for passengers.
3) The first [and all following] abusive TSA agents need to find themselves very publicly in the midst of Civil Service disciplinary procedures, including charges of abuse of due process.
4) The DHS reminds the abused passengers of 42 USC 1983, which makes abuse of civil rights one of the few charges where the Federal employee can be sued personally for violating the civil rights of a citizen, and NOT protected by sovereign immunity.
This will cause an exodus of the incompetent from the TSA. That is a good thing. It will create room for the re-creation of the TSA under another name and chain of command to perform the necessary function properly.
In passing, a couple of years after I retired as a Peace Officer, one of my former Captains, a truly good cop, retired. He went to the TSA, and told them to shove it after a few weeks on the job. The lack of skills, professionalism, and deliberate abuse of citizens for no purpose other than the amusement of TSA staff were more than he wanted to put up with.
I note that I trained my former Captain when he was a new officer out of the Academy. His promotions were deserved, and that I can and have trusted him with my life. I trust his professional standards, and his evaluation of the TSA as he encountered it.
I was with you, then you lost me at the sovereign immunity waiver.
As a police officer, would you want to have the same restriction placed on you, and do you expect it would cause an exodus of only bad cops?? What about when someone tries to sue you, even if you aren’t culpable, but they run up a huge bill for you on legal defense and stress your life in general?
I don’t want to protect incompetence either. However, if we can just be allowed to actually discipline and, if necessary, fire incompetence regardless of race, gender, or other “party favor” status then that issue could be corrected.
As a cop, for 28 years I DID have to deal with 42 USC 1983. Every freaking day. While surrounded by lawsuit happy felons, ACLU lawyers, and administrators who were terrified of both. The key is following proper procedure, doing your job, and not screwing with people just because you can and that you think that you are immune to everything.
Archer has it right above:
Being hit, appropriately, from both the chain of command and by the courts is the only way to undo what has been done by the Left. In reality, what happened to Albert was a violation of the procedures, outside of what they are supposed to do and in theory trained to do. And they know that they will not be called on it by their chain of command. Their chain of command, up to the incoming top people in DHS, has been trained and rewarded to cover up abuse. General Kelly and his new staff can start the process from the top, but if we are to regain any sort of trust by the public we are supposed to serve, we have to show that criminals with badges are not above the law.
Subotai Bahadur
I work as an agent and I’m not a thug nor thief. I’m a hard working mom who just graduated. One thing I do know is we don’t do anything that is not in the guidelines. I don’t understand why people think we want to touch you. Most people are not clean; on their person or in their bags. If she couldn’t go though the metal detector, how else are we suppose to make sure she is able to come though? I don’t think people realized how far other people lying just to get a knife or a gun or whatever they want in.
Section 1983 is already the law, and has been for decades. If you disagree with it take it up with Congress. All DHS has to do is bring it to passengers’ (and staff’s) attention.
After taking her horrifying experience public, Albert received an apology from the TSA and a promise to investigate the incident.
An investigation that almost certainly will find no fault on the part of the grope-happy employee. “Just following procedure,” of course. “Nothing to see here. Plenty to feel, but nothing to see.”
TSA also promised to train their employees on proper handling of individuals with medical needs.
Sure. Train them all you want. But until violations of those “proper handling” guidelines are decisively dealt with, there will always be more.
I contend that it’s not a “training” issue; I have no doubts they’ve been trained. When violations of their own rules are not punished, it’s a “discipline” issue, which is indicative of a deeper cultural issue.
The TSA is a culture of thugs, thieves, and perverts — the supervisors (also being thugs, thieves, and perverts) see nothing wrong with this. No amount of investigations or training alone will fix it.
Is that the fat, self-righteous, entitled, smart-ass Donna Brazille in the video?
I am a retired airline pilot of more than 33 years of flying. I was flying before there was anything like the TSA. I realise times have changed but this is unacceptable to the public and to human dignity! When this crap first began I found myself facing security people just out of their teen years ordering me around in front of the line of passengers just because they could. Standing in uniform with a security badge around my neck and being told to take off my hat, belt and to take the batteries out of my flashlight. They took every book from my flight kit and were about to order me to remove my coat when I told the agent that I had enough and for him to call his supervisor. The super showed up and was aghast at what had happened and promised it would never happen again. Unfortunately, these people are given minimal training and many do not have the personality to be in such a position of power. As a nation, we should stand up and demand that something be done to stop this humiliating abuse at the federal level. Think about it, and you will realise that only in prison can someone be treated like this legally. Yet we are ticket buying travellers who are at the mercy of people who have no training to be this invasive into our lives and bodies. The bottom line is that the TSA has failed more than 95% of the deliberate tests to get an illegal item through their system! Why should this woman who was in such a bad way be treated in such a manner?
When going thru chemo, you become really sensitive to cold. I had to wear gloves to get anything out of the frig. If I wore any kind of dress shoe, I would get blisters from even my most worn in shoes due to skin thinning. Chemo attacks the fastest growing cells first. Skin thins and you end up with mouth sores. I didn’t lose all of my hair (not breast cancer) but it thinned. I didn’t realize how much it thinned until it started growing back and I had a halo of hair. I feel really bad for that woman. No one should have to suffer more because of an illness.
No one has a “right” to fly. If you don’t like the process then don’t fly. I must have missed the part where there was any “body cavity search” in the video. What I saw was a simple pat down where the passenger became belligerent. Next story…
With your reasoning, you don’t have the right to effective medicine either. If you don’t like the way medicine is treated by the FDA then don’t buy it. There is no prescription medicine that is not approved by the FDA. Just like there is no passenger boarding without the TSA. Does that mean that any unreasonable requirement by the government is fine because you don’t have to use the product involved? The government is so deeply involved in our daily lives that it is almost to the “1984” level. The ability to change federal government policy or personnel is almost impossible without a public outcry. Witness the VA.